Today I spent hours snail mailing and emailing my “Death of America” story to The Powers that Be.
Why? Because somebody has got to do something about the wretched SCOTUS decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission!
I honestly think this ruling of is a death knell for average people trying to achieve the American Dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the form of a job, a home, health care, and decent public education. What are the chances average Americans will get these when it is NOT average Americans electing their representatives, but instead corporations (American or foreign) pumping money into campaigns to sway the outcome? Really terrifying.
America NEEDS campaign finance laws. Why? Because money makes voices disproportionately louder. Because corporate money is self-oriented—not American people oriented. And lastly, money corrupts. Plain and simple.
For the five Justices in the Majority to give a corporation the 1st Amendment Right to free speech as if it were a real person is absurd. I seriously doubt that our Founding Fathers thought “We the People” included corporations. They were smart people. If they wanted to include corporations, they would have done so.
President Obama is up in arms about this court case. He said:
“I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections…It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street, banks, health insurance companies…to drown out the voice of everyday Americans.”
Except, Mr. President, this protestation doesn’t ring true to me.
- Wall Street won a victory when you appointed Geithner and Summers.
- Banks won a victory with your support of Ben “Mr. Opaque” Bernanke.
- Health insurance companies won a big victory with your pathetic health care “reform” bill requiring ALL Americans, if they didn’t have coverage, to buy it (or face taxes and policing by the IRS. So Draconian. So anti-average people. So unaffordable. So disgusting.)
- Big Pharma also won a victory in your pitiful health care “reform” bill by not requiring them to cut costs on drugs or allowing Americans to buy cheaper medicine elsewhere, like Canada.
You have NO moral authority to blast Big Interests. If it hadn’t been for the Coakley debacle, you’d still be on your high horse, trotting around the “little people” in your lofty “I know what’s best for you” stance.
I prefer the moral outrage of Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens. In his dissenting opinion he said:
“The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation”…Unlike our colleagues, they (The Framers of the Constitution) had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.
“At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
Well said, Justice Stevens. You are a voice of reason. I hope you are not planning to retire. Although I can perfectly understand what a drag it is to go to work with those Five legally-inept colleagues of yours. Too bad Tom Lantos isn’t around to call them “Legal Pygmies.” They are stinking up the Chamber with their pernicious rulings. Maybe you should carry a can of Glade under your robe. Or better yet, as those Five feast like maggots on the decaying matter of the American people’s rights, get out the Raid!
Justice Stevens: America needs you just where you are. But if you do retire and get bored, you could go hang out with my Dad and watch his tomatoes grow. OR, if you need a project to work on, please consider the AAPS Movement. (I wrote about it in my blog of January 2, 2010.) AAPS stands for Average Americans Protecting Society. The basic premise is that any corporation/institution/entity has to act in a manner of what is best for America, not themselves.
So far, I’m the only member of this auspicious group. Care to join me?
